Warren hears from local fishermen about industry under attack’

Wednesday

Apr 3, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 3, 2013 at 3:08 AM

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has asked Congress to provide disaster-relief funds to Northeast fishermen, listened to local fishermen vent on Tuesday during her visit to Haddad’s Ocean Cafe in Marshfield. Chief among the fishermen’s concerns are the looming reductions in groundfish catch quotas.

Patrick Ronan

Steve Welch is selling one of his two fishing boats this year because of new catch limits set to go into effect next month. With one less boat, he’s been forced to drop five employees – four of whom have families to support.

Speaking directly to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday, Welch said one of the South Shore’s proudest traditions is doomed to extinction unless the federal government stops bullying small-boat fishermen/

“They want to get rid of the little guys, the people that know how to nurture the resource, the people who do not care about getting rich,” Welch, a Scituate fisherman, said. “We just want to provide for our families, and we want to work, and we want to employ people.”

Warren, who has asked Congress to provide disaster-relief funds to Northeast fishermen, met with dozens of local fishermen on Tuesday during her visit to Haddad’s Ocean Cafe in Marshfield. Chief among the fishermen’s concerns are the looming reductions in groundfish catch quotas.

Starting May 1, the New England Fishery Management Council, the regional arm of the National Marine Fisheries Service, will reduce the cod catch in the Gulf of Maine by 77 percent and on Georges Bank by 61 percent.

About 40 local fishermen attended the one-hour session with Warren, a Democrat in her first term in the Senate. Fishermen also voiced concerns about the distribution of fish import tariffs they say are being diverted to uses other than the fishing industry, environmental restrictions and bigger boats depleting fish stocks.

Last September, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce issued a disaster declaration in the Northeast groundfish fishery. On March 23, the Senate approved an amendment filed by Warren that sets aside disaster-relief funds for fisheries in the fiscal 2014 budget.

But Warren expects the Republican-led House of Representatives, which ignored a similar bill earlier this year, will balk at the relief package.

“I’m worried. I’m very worried,” Warren said. “I’m worried about the future of our small boats, and what that means for our coastal communities.

“It’s not that our coastal communities won’t survive; there are other economic pieces to these towns. But they won’t survive as we knew them, and that scares me.”

Jim Reardon, a Northeast fishery sector manager based in Quincy, said the fishing industry, like the farming industry, is ruled by special interests.

“The whole system is highly politicized, and it’s getting more politicized,” Reardon said.

Scituate fisherman Frank Mirarchi said the plight of the local fishing industry is on display at local stores. He said he was shopping in a Marshfield supermarket recently and was troubled to see only one type of fish that had been caught by local fishermen.

“Everything else was from another country or it was aquacultured. It sickened me,” Mirarchi said. “It frightened me, really, to see, right here in the heart of our community, a seafood display case where probably 5 percent of the goods on display were locally sourced.”